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At Home in Cohasset

In this episode—we drive for three days, have one more barbeque dinner and return to snowy Cohasset.

After a couple of days at Buck Hall, we headed home. Out route this time was to go north inland from the coast, but not pick up the Interstate highways until we got to New Jersey. On Tuesday, we traveled along the coast until just below Myrtle Beach, SC, then on to Wilmington, NC and a short bit of I-40 to NC-41 to Kinston, NC, then NC-11 and US 13 to Norfolk, VA and over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel to Kiptopeke State Park on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

We arrived just as it was getting at Kiptopeke State Park. There was one other vehicle in the 150 site campground, another Roadtrek. We just picked a site at random, away from the other Roadtrek, had dinner and retired. It was a long 12 hour drive.

Wednesday was more of the same. We drove up the Eastern Shore through Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, then took the NJ Turnpike and Garden State Parkway up to I-87 and over the Tappan Zee Bridge, our usual route around New York City. We then went north on I-684 to I-84 at Danbury. We have stopped at the Connecticut Welcome Center in the past, but it was too early to stop. We decided to try to make Sturbridge, MA by dark and put off getting home that day.

The last photos we had from Ellen's brother showed the front of the house quite snowbound and we had heard that the street was down to one lane. We didn't want to chance having nowhere to park Speedy when we inevitably arrived late at night.

The Town Seemed to Have Plowed Us In

But Our Neighbor Cut a Path For Us

When we arrived in Sturbridge, we stopped at the local Cracker Barrel and got our first close-up look at mountains of snow. We frequent Cracker Barrel restaurants when on the long road passages because they let us park overnight and have edible cheap eats. We were surprised that the Country-themed restaurant had a location in Massachusetts, particularly in Sturbridge.

It didn't look very promising for an overnight as the parking lot was quite sloped in the RV area, but we figured that we could find a flat spot later in the evening after it closed. 

But it was not to be. We went inside and were told there was a 35 minute wait. I looked in the dining room and saw that there were nine tables empty and asked how many parties were ahead of us. Five was the reply. The I asked why we couldn't be seated with all those empty tables. The answer was a bit perplexing.

They said that they had a large bus group about an hour before and the kitchen was still 30 minutes behind. When I asked why we couldn't just be seated even though we knew there would be a wait. The reply was that it meant that the server assigned to that table would have to serve us and it might mean that the assignments wouldn't be balanced. ??? After asking if it wouldn't be better to have their customers comfortably seated rather than standing around for a half hour and getting a shrug, we left.

A quick consultation with the Google oracle turned up several other places to eat in Sturbridge including B.T.'s Smokehouse, Southern-style BBQ. Barbecue it was.

This is good BBQ in Sturbridge! Ellen liked it even more than the Pink Pig, although I thought the sauces at the Pink Pig were better. We decided to order a single three-meat platter to share. It was enough for four, not two.

That's St. Louis-style ribs, beef brisket and pulled pork with sides of carrot salad, potato salad and cornbread. All very good. We had enough left over to bring home for another meal (the benefits of a refrigerator in Speedy)—and it was much tastier than anything we could have gotten at Cracker Barrel.

After dinner at B.T.'s, we were in search of a parking spot. There was a local Walmart, so we gave that a try. We couldn't park in the Walmart's main lot, but the customer service person said we could stay in the lot between the Walmart and the movie theater, if it was plowed out. It was sort of plowed and we found a spot behind a large snow pile for the night. They even turned out the lights in that lot after the stores closed, an unusual occurrence. After another 12 hour drive, it was another early night.

We were up before 6am and off to Cohasset, first stopping at the Charlton Plaza on the Mass Pike for coffee. It is just beyond the Sturbridge interchange and would have also been an alternative overnight spot. We will keep it in mind for later.

The drive home was pretty good considering that it was rush hour by the time we got to 128. The traffic was heavy by then but only stopped a couple of times. We were home by 8:15.

We were surprised by the snow when we arrived. I don't know why, since we'd had photos from earlier in the month. It is still hard to believe this much snow in mid-March, even though it looks about half as high as a month ago (and twice as dense).

We're Home!

A Month Ago

We were quite fortunate in several ways when we arrived. The road was now wide enough for us to park in front without blocking traffic. Our neighbor, Tom, had plowed our front walk so we could get to the front door and offload Speedy without plodding through knee-deep snow. Our next door neighbor, Joe, had plowed out much of the area where we usually keep Speedy and most of the entrance to the root cellar as part of clearing his driveway and parking areas. He had told me he would if he could use it to store his vehicles while plowing. It worked out for both of us.

After emptying Speedy, we tackled the final few feet of snow in front of the root cellar door. The Subaru was behind that door. We freed the Subaru and parked Speedy in front of the door and still had room to park the Subaru. 

We turned up the heat, turned on the hot water heater and we were home.

A bit later, we went out to do some errands and went past Sandy Beach. The town had used the parking lot to store excess snow from the roads, 10,000 tons of snow according to the local paper. It was an impressive sight...the entire length of the parking lot and about 15 feet high. Judging from the color (dirt gray), it must have been quite a bit higher.

Ellen has since driven by an even larger pile at Hingham Harbor. The towns are not allowed to dump snow into the ocean, so they pile it up in the beach parking lots and where does it go when it melts?